I've been searching around these forums a bit and saw that the general consensus is that other than documents purchased via Amazon, nothing is tracked or sent back to Amazon. Today I experienced something that makes me wonder otherwise - maybe someone can help explain this.

I have a Kindle 3G. Two days ago my battery was completely charged. Usually the battery will last 2 weeks at least, with the wireless turned on. Yesterday I copied about 1000 PDF files (technical documents I need for work) to my Kindle via USB. This morning when I woke up, my battery was almost dead.

As far as I understand, the main thing that drains the battery on the device is using the wireless connection. The only conclusion I can come to, is that the wireless was working all night long, and doing something for each of the 1000 pdfs on my device. I don't know if it was transmitting statistics, copying files, or what but am trying to figure this out.

I have a Kindle 3G. Two days ago my battery was completely charged. Usually the battery will last 2 weeks at least, with the wireless turned on. Yesterday I copied about 1000 PDF files (technical documents I need for work) to my Kindle via USB. This morning when I woke up, my battery was almost dead.

It would be. It was indexing your 1000 documents, and that takes a lot of processing power.

Type some nonsense string (I generally use 'ddddddddddd', or some such) on the home page, and click "Search". It will tell you how many documents (if any) are unindexed. It's a good idea to leave the Kindle connected to a power source while it's indexing - it does drain the battery pretty quickly.

It's absolutely nothing to do with the wireless.

As a general principle, though, I'd suggest turning the wireless off if you're not using it - it's just draining power for no useful purpose. It's only two key presses to turn the wireless on or off.

The battery probably got all used up indexing 1000 pdf files at one go.

Bingo.
Huge numbers of books slapped on it at once will consume massive amounts of battery power indexing those files (or trying to index those files). Plus some of those 1000 books may be stuck indexing. Put the books on in smaller amounts and give the index process time to complete before adding more.

While no one will argue that a myriad of details (location, drm status, time, etc..) doesn't get logged to a file on the Kindle itself (nor will they argue its ability to communicate that logfile to Amazon if it wanted to) ... BUT! ... no one, to date, has ever caught a Kindle actually sending any of that data back to Amazon yet. And many have tried.

Well, it seems to have affected the the battery life of the Kindle when 1000 PDF were placed on the Kindle.

Sure, it drains the battery. But it doesn't stop you from using the Kindle. It's completely different to the (old) Sony, where, if you had a large number of books on the machine, making ANY change to the file system would result in a lengthy (mine got to be over an hour) delay during which the reader was just locked up. It's a completely different situation.

I would suggest that adding 1000 files at once to your reader is not a frequent occurrence. The issue with the Sony was that the lock-up occurred whenever you made ANY change to storage, even a single book.

But you know this of course. You're just using this as an excuse for yet another anti-Amazon tirade. We've had enough of it.